Editor of Times Tells Staff He Accepts Blame for Fraud

By JACQUES STEINBERG

Published: May 15, 2003

The executive editor of The New York Times told a town-hall-style meeting of newsroom staff members yesterday that he accepted blame for the breakdown of communication and oversight that allowed a Times reporter to commit frequent acts of journalistic fraud in recent months.

But the executive editor, Howell Raines, spent much of his time at the nearly two-hour meeting responding to often angry complaints and questions about his management style, according to people who attended the session.

One business reporter, Alex Berenson, asked Mr. Raines if he had considered resigning, to which Mr. Raines responded that he would not step down unless asked to by The Times's publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Mr. Sulzberger, who was sitting next to Mr. Raines, quickly interjected that he would not accept Mr. Raines's resignation even if offered.

The meeting was convened by Mr. Sulzberger; Mr. Raines; and the paper's managing editor, Gerald M. Boyd, after The Times published a four-page package on Sunday that detailed how the reporter, Jayson Blair, had fabricated quotations, falsified datelines or lifted material from other newspapers in several dozen articles over a six-month period, which ended with his resignation on May 1.

''I'm here to listen to your anger, wherever it's directed,'' Mr. Raines said at the outset of the closed meeting, according to a recording made by someone in the audience, ''to tell you that I know that our institution has been damaged, that I accept my responsibility for that and I intend to fix it.''

He said later, ''I was guilty of a failure of vigilance that, since I sit in this chair where the buck stops, I should have prevented.''

But Mr. Raines made clear that he viewed the session as something more: a forum on his 20-month tenure as the newsroom's leader. During this period the paper has won eight Pulitzer Prizes -- six for its coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- but it has also been a time of dissension. A growing number of employees have expressed deepening concern about what is viewed as a top-down management style that, they say, could have contributed to Mr. Blair's ability to do what he did undetected for so long.

''You view me as inaccessible and arrogant,'' Mr. Raines said, ticking off a list he had compiled from his own newsroom interviews in recent days. ''You believe the newsroom is too hierarchical, that my ideas get acted on and others get ignored. I heard that you were convinced there's a star system that singles out my favorites for elevation.''

''Fear,'' he added, ''is a problem to such extent, I was told, that editors are scared to bring me bad news.''

Before opening the session to questions, Mr. Raines made a pre-emptive attempt to address whether Mr. Blair's race -- he is black -- had played a role in his being added last fall to the team covering the hunt for the snipers in the Washington area.

Only six months earlier, Mr. Blair, 27, had been found to be making so many serious errors as a reporter on the metropolitan staff that he had been informed that his job was in jeopardy.

''Our paper has a commitment to diversity and by all accounts he appeared to be a promising young minority reporter,'' Mr. Raines said. ''I believe in aggressively providing hiring and career opportunities for minorities.''

''Does that mean I personally favored Jayson?'' he added, a moment later. ''Not consciously. But you have a right to ask if I, as a white man from Alabama, with those convictions, gave him one chance too many by not stopping his appointment to the sniper team. When I look into my heart for the truth of that, the answer is yes.''

In addressing Mr. Raines and Mr. Boyd, one newsroom employee after another gave voice to complaints and concerns that they had mostly shared only with one another in the months leading up to the disclosure of what Mr. Blair had done.

''I believe that at a deep level you guys have lost the confidence of many parts of the newsroom,'' said Joe Sexton, a deputy metropolitan editor, according to notes taken by an audience member. ''I do not feel a sense of trust and reassurance that judgments are properly made.''

''People feel less led than bullied,'' he added.

Shaila K. Dewan, a reporter on the metropolitan staff, said she worried about the message young reporters would take from Mr. Blair's advancement despite his performance. ''What will you do to restore our faith that there is a modicum of fairness in the advancement process?''

Many of the reporters and editors left the meeting saying that it would take months, if not years, for Mr. Raines to prove he could raise morale in the newsroom.

But Joyce Purnick, who writes the Metro Matters column and has worked at the paper since 1979, expressed more optimism than most.

''It struck me as an unusually raw, emotional and candid session,'' she said afterward. ''I think the willingness of Howell, Arthur and Gerald to take all of that, and to accept responsibility for what happened, at least creates the potential for some fundamental changes.''

''Whether we will ultimately see those changes, I obviously don't know,'' she added. ''But today I feel that we could, and in the earlier stages of this awful story, I was not all that sure.''